Oral History Interview with Kenneth Iverson, June 11, 1999.
Interview I-0083. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007):
Electronic Edition. Steel in the South: Forty Years of Innovation and GrowthIverson, Kenneth,
interviewee Interview conducted by Mosnier, JosephFunding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the
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Oral History Interview with Kenneth Iverson,
June 11, 1999. Interview I-0083. Southern Oral History Program
Collection (#4007)Series I. Business History. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (I-0083)Joseph Mosnier172 MbChapel Hill, N. C.Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill11 June 1999Oral History Interview with Kenneth Iverson, June
11, 1999. Interview I-0083. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)Series I. Business History. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (I-0083)Kenneth Iverson35 p.Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at
Chapel HillChapel Hill, North Carolina11 June 1999Interview conducted on June 11, 1999, by Joseph Mosnier;
recorded in Unknown. Transcribed by Unknown. Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series I. Business History, Manuscripts Department, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.

The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.

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Interview with Kenneth Iverson, June 11, 1999. Interview I-0083.
Conducted by Joseph Mosnier

Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round
Wilson Library

Citation of this interview should be as follows: “Interview I-0083, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”

Kenneth Iverson describes his rise through the steel industry. An innovator in
both the social and business side of management, Iverson rose to become
president of Nucor Steel in 1964, and he quickly restructured the struggling
company, moving it to Charlotte in 1966 and turning it into a profitable
business. He seemed to have little trouble dismantling racial segregation or
breaking down gender barriers, and while he disapproves of unions, he insists
that Nucor's policies reward its employees enough that they have little need of
union protection.

Short Abstract

Kenneth Iverson, president of Nucor Steel, describes his approach to business,
Nucor's success, and the changing profile of the steel industry in the United States.

Downers Grove was at that time a city of about 10,000 people that was
about thirty miles west of Chicago. My father's main place of business
was at Cicero with the Western Electric installation there.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

As a young man, I presume you attended public schools in Downers Grove?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yes, I did.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

As you were charting your educational course coming out of high school,
what sorts of ambitions did you have in front of you? What were you
looking down the road to think you might do?

KENNETH IVERSON:

When I graduated from high school, I thought about being an attorney. I
graduated in 1943 and the Navy at that time had a program for students
where they put them through college. It was called a V-12 program. You
went through college very, very rapidly. I graduated in 1943. I had a
commission in the Navy and a degree in mechanical engineering and was
sent overseas in 1945.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Where did you go with the Navy?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Where did they send me then? They gave me a commission to report to John
Rogers Field in Hawaii, Honolulu. I don't think I was twenty yet.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Did you go on from there to—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I was in Johnson Island for six months. I was in the Navy for a total of
over three years. I got a discharge from the Navy as a Lieutenant JG and
subsequently went to Purdue for a master's [degree] in mechanical
engineering.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I suppose this is a question you've fielded a number of times. Were
there key values or aspects of your character that emerged from these
experiences — childhood, family, education, Navy — that would be at the
center of who you were as a business leader?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I'm not sure I can answer that. You're not aware always of the affect of
the experiences on your evaluation of business or your ambitions. My
father died when I was in high school. So that I had really to—. I was
married when I was getting my master's degree. My objective at that time
was to gain business experience. When I graduated with a master's, they
asked me to continue on and get a Ph.D., but I didn't feel that I wanted
to. I looked at a number of companies, and the one that really intrigued
me the most was doing research for International Harvester at that time.
I ran an electron microscope and radiography. Those were my interests,
and I did that for about five years. I was the assistant to the chief
research physicist. I didn't want to spend my life doing that, so I left
and became a manager in a small company called Illium Corporation, which
was making specialty alloys.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

That was the first step over into metallurgy and foundry.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. Although there was metallurgy work in the electron microscope.
There was a lot of metallurgy.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

When was it that you realized that work around metallurgy, foundry
science and ultimately steel down the road—. Was there ever a point that
you decided this was very much the career that you wanted to pursue? Was
that coming out of your years at Purdue?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was in my going to Purdue because I had been an aeronautical engineer
and aeronautical engineers at that time would spend about seven years at
a drafting table before really getting responsibilities, and I just
wasn't interested in doing that. Metallurgy as such was very empirical.
When you designed an engine, you made the design and then you multiplied
the part by four times that strength, or something,
just because that worked. There was not a lot of pure scientific theory
or exercise or mathematics at that time in metallurgy. Metallurgy was
still very much the type of red glow that gave you what you wanted when
you heat treated something. Heat treating temperatures and the physics
reasons behind it weren't all that clear.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Between your work at International Harvester and finally Coast Metals,
you worked in several different places. How did you chart your course
through these early professional experiences?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Well, it was where the opportunities were and where my interest was. I
left International Harvester to go with a small company, Illium
Corporation in Freeport. That was a foundry and a five-car garage. It
really was. But it made an alloy illium that was used to extrude
cellophane through sulfuric acid, so it was highly specialized type of
operation. I left there and went to—. Let's see, after Illium I went to—

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Was it Cannon-Muskegon at that point?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. There was one in between. The one in Valparaiso, Indiana. Made
alnico magnets. Then I went to Cannon-Muskegon subsequently. I'll have
to think.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Early fifties, I think.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. Early fifties.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Tell me how you found your way to Coast Metals.

KENNETH IVERSON:

I was approached by Coast Metals to take a position as the Executive
Vice President by one of the big owners. There were three principal
owners. It was also a specialty induction melting shop that was making
blades and vanes and wire that was variety of special cobalt, nickel,
iron based alloys. I ought to go back a little bit. Meanwhile we had
experiences in Cannon-Muskegon that were very unusual. We had one at the
first factory vacuum melting furnaces in the United
States. We did vacuum melted uranium and a beryllium crucible, beryllium
oxide crucible for the Nautilus. We were involved in a lot of very
special alloys and projects. But after a while I felt I need to do
something different, so I went to Coast Metals. I wasn't there that
long. They got into a dispute. I had some stockholders who wanted to
give me some options on shares of the company and one of the main
stockholders objected and said that if they did that he would instituted
a [law] suit. I decided I didn't want any part of that, so I left. At
that time Nuclear Corporation of America had been trying to buy Coast
Metals. I had permission from the directors and I would work with
various companies that were for sale and look at them on the weekends or
during vacation periods or with time off. I looked at a number and they
were a Johnny-come-lately conglomerate, I guess you'd say. Fnally I saw
this one Vulcraft Corporation in Florence, South Carolina where it was
being run by the widow of the man who had started it. I must have looked
at dozens and said no it really wasn't a very good idea. This one I
thought had a lot of promise making steel joists. I suggested that they
go ahead and buy it. They did.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me ask you about this process by which you scouted for them and
looked at potential targets — companies to buy. I presume you went out
in the field and kicked the tires a little bit.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Oh, yeah. I went through the plant and talked to them and looked at the
financials and all the rest on a number of companies.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Around this time — '62 — you were thirty-seven years old. Had you
traveled much in the South?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. I had not up until that time. Now some of those were in the South,
but the joist plant was the first one that was really concentrated —
only concentrated — in the South.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

In reading some of the various materials on the company in your book, I
was absolutely dumbstruck to see that in 1965 you knocked the walls out
between the segregated locker rooms.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Oh, yeah.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

How did you manage—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was earlier than that wasn't it?

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Oh, I beg your pardon.

KENNETH IVERSON:

'64, yeah.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

In fact make an important point. I misspoke about the date. It's earlier
than that and that's very important because the Civil Rights Act hadn't
passed yet. First of all, how do you take the measure of the situation —
the stark racial divide in the South — and then decide that as a manager
you're going to put yourself in the middle of that and manage the
aftermath? How did that whole story unfold?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It started to unfold probably because we put an addition on the plant.
We were having a weekend in which everybody was going to go through. I
had not really been that conscious that there was even any conflict
until the head of public relations at that time for the company came in
and said, "We're all set. We have the carpet ready and the lines going
down and the tent to give them all ice cream cones and cokes after
they've all been through. I've only got one question from you." He said,
"Mr. Iverson, when are we going to take the niggers through?" That's the
way he said it. I never thought of it that way. It took me up short. I
said, "Alfred, I don't know. I'll get back to you." I didn't even know
it was an issue. To me it was completely alien. I got the plant manager
on the phone and I said, "What's this about taking the Negroes through
at a different time?" He said, "Oh, that's the old foolishness. We can
take them all through together." So we did. We had
the blacks and whites and everybody going through with their kids and
their families. It was a great success. I never even had been involved
in any racial problems before. That was my first experience with them.
When I went there they also had a white Christmas Party and a black
Christmas Party. They were separated. As the head, as the Chief
Executive Officer of that, I had to go to both. I did. I think it was
for two years and then we just cut it out all together. We never had any
problems — racial problems — to speak of.

I remember in Florence — when I moved there — they had a white's high
school and they had a black high school. I was invited to speak at the
black high school to the students. The people who were around me — some
of the whites — said, "Oh wait until you see it. It's new and they've
torn it all apart and it's such a mess you'll never believe it." So I
drove out there with some expectations that were inaccurate. It was as
new and as clean and as well kept and as swept as any place you've ever
been in. I was very, very impressed with them. I gave my talk and that
was that.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Were there any African-Americans in Downers Grove when you were a child?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I think there were a couple.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

May have been a couple at Purdue when you were on the campus.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Oh yeah. Sure.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

And you'd had your military experience.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yep.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

But certainly in your family vacations on the Montana prairie you
wouldn't have had—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

You wouldn't see many [African Americans], No.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Maybe it was a non-issue, but it seems quite an extraordinary thing,
from my perspective today, that you were willing to grapple with and
engage that issue the way you did so early on. I would've thought that
someone in your managerial position would've been worried about the
ramifications for the company?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I'm sure there were people in managerial positions that may have been,
but as far as I'm concerned, it was just a ridiculous issue to have
separate restrooms for black and white. We just eliminated [them]. I'm
sure there were people who didn't like what I did. There never had any
problem with it.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

So in ensuing years when you would locate plants in rural areas of the
South, it wasn't really much of an issue?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

That's very interesting.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We always felt the rural areas were great untapped labor resources.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Interesting.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Well, I'll tell you a story that you'll want to hear about. My son at
that time was in the fifth grade—.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

You mean when you moved to Florence?

KENNETH IVERSON:

This was when we moved to Florence. My daughter—. The schools weren't
good enough, so I decided I ought to send her to Ashley Hall in
Charleston. She went there. He went to the fifth grade, and he came home
shortly after he started and he said—. I was on my way to the plant and
getting ready and he said, "Dad, I don't want to go to school." I said,
"Mark, why don't you want to go to school?" He said, "Well, the kids
have all hooks that they hang coats on and their jackets with their
names on them. I don't have a hook with my name on it.'" He said, "I'm not sure I can find the seat that's assigned to
me." Then he started to cry and he said, "Dad, I can't understand what
the teacher is saying." The teacher was a Mrs. Singleterry from
Charleston, South Carolina who had a heavy Charleston brogue. A few
weeks later — this is how quickly children adapt — he came home and
said, "Do you know what a perd and a sittence is?" I said, "No." He
said, "A perd is what you put at de end of da sittence." Then he came
home another time and he said, "Did you know the Great Lakes were filled
with salt water?" I said, "Mark, we lived in Michigan. You know the
Great Lakes are fresh water." He said, "Well, I'll tell you. There's a
fifth grade class in South Carolina that's growing up that's been taught
that the Great Lakes are salt water." I said, "Well, why don't you speak
up?" He said, "You don't tell Mrs. Singleterry anything." So those were
interesting experiences.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Sure, sure.

KENNETH IVERSON:

But there's a sequel, too. A year later in the sixth grade, he came home
after he started [school] and he said, "Do you know the fellow from
Illinois who has moved here and bought the Ford Dealership?" I said,
"Yes." He said, "Well he's got a son in my class and gosh does he talk
peculiarly."

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Tell me about early key challenges in finding your way as President —
after '65 — of Vulcraft and building a business. What were the principal
challenges in finding markets and managing the production site?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Well, we had a serious problem. I took over the joist plant as a Vice
President, then became a Group Vice President and moved to Phoenix,
Arizona. The company had some six divisions, most of which were not
doing well. It had about twenty million in sales and was losing about
400,000 a year. Well, finally the President resigned, and I think I got
the job by default. I happened to have the only divisions that were
making money, so I became President. This was 1965.
We had to clean out the company. We got half rid of half of the
divisions. We decided there wasn't any reason to stay in Phoenix, and it
would be better to move closer to a larger operating division. I'm kind
of opposed to a corporate headquarters being right at a division because
that's kind of like living with your mother-in-law. But we picked
Charlotte. Charlotte didn't pick us. We moved in 1966. We moved from
Phoenix, Arizona to Charlotte and have the corporate headquarters have
been here ever since.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Why Charlotte?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Charlotte had good transportation and remember we had a division in
Nebraska, and we had at that time a division in New Jersey, and it
offered good transportation. It was located nearer to our larger
division, which was the joist plant in Florence, and we were thinking
about building a steel mill in Darlington. It was related and had what
we felt the company needed.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

You mentioned transportation as one aspect of Charlotte's
attractiveness. At that point in the evolution of the growing business,
would there have been other infrastructure or business community aspects
about Charlotte that were attractive? Did you need say a range of
banking or other financial services?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. You could've found those anywhere. That wasn't the main reason for
moving here.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Proximity seemed to be good transportation.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Transportation was an important factor because of course our divisions
in South Carolina and Nebraska and New Jersey. We looked at Chicago. We
looked at New York City. We looked at Atlanta and we looked at
Charlotte.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Charlotte would be back then distinctly the smallest and most—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. That's right.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

It was a selling point?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was easy to get to the airport. It was a good place to have a
business headquarters.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Settling into Charlotte in those years, did you try to find your way
into groups like the Chamber or other networks of business leaders?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

That wasn't part of—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

That wasn't. We were building a company that had a lot of problems and a
lot of opportunities at the same time. At one point the total equity of
the company, I think, was $700,000. It was almost bankrupt. Our problem
was solving those problems and building the company. We had less than a
dozen people here. We started out with Sam Siegel and myself. That was
the whole office. We weren't really a company that was dependent on the
retail interests of the community or the financial interests of the
community. I had been members of the Chamber of Commerce and [the]
Rotary and Elks, but because of the traveling, I just wasn't able to
sustain those and I felt that they weren't that critical.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

In those early years when you were squaring up a difficult business
situation and moving forward—. This is sort of broad, reflective
question. I don't know if there will be things that spring to mind or
not, but I'm wondering what sources of information were the ones upon
which you tended to draw? What kinds of things influenced your thinking
in a broad and general sense? What sources of information tended to
impinge on your attention? Was it mostly the within the trade—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

A lot of it was trade. We were in the steel joist business, so the
construction business was an important part of Nucor and has been and
continues to be. We were interested in new ways we
could expand into other steel products. We were a member of the—.
Martha, would you like to come in here a minute?

MARTHA IVERSON:

Just a second.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Should I turn this off for a second?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Sure.

KENNETH IVERSON:

My move to Charlotte, I think, was the fifteenth move I'd had since I
left Purdue. I used to have a saying that my Martha had the instinct,
the ability, of nesting but the ability to move the nest around. She
said, "The problem was he couldn't hold a job." Are you married?

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I'm not married.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Oh, okay.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let's see. You made me laugh, and I've lost my—. Two questions about
general philosophical outlook that are relevant to your company's
history. The first [question is about] your choice not to — down the
road when the company becomes much bigger and foreign trade issues
become very prominent, for example — have the company engaged in trying
to influence the political arena directly. Can you talk a little bit
about why that is?

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's right. We never had a representative in Washington. We felt that
our business was the steel business, and we should really pay attention
to that. We also were free traders. We felt there were sometimes steel
companies outside the United States that could compete with us, but that
we because of our processes and our employees, we were able to compete
with any steel company in the world. We felt that we should not be
denied access to their markets, nor should they be denied access to
ours. I feel that same way today except for perhaps a little bit
moderated in light of the low cost imports that were flooding this
country during last year in the steel industry. I'm not quite as
positive about that as I used to be.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

The point that qualifies your thinking is perhaps that we may be seeing
dumping as opposed to just competitive trade?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yes. I felt it was unjust rather than just competitive trade. Although
dumping itself is rather difficult to define because we have steel
companies here that dump on the other side of the state and other parts
of the country. I don't know if dumping is that good of a word if you
define it as just selling less than cost.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Right. Were there ever times when a certain issue — in front of the
Congress or otherwise — along the way made you stop and think you should
relax that rule and send a lobbyist up to Washington?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. There were times. I testified before Congress at one time and the
Senate, but it was against trade restrictions rather than for them. But
there were times that I've had some double thoughts about it,
particularly in recent years.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me ask you about this, as well. As Nucor prospered and became
identified as a highly successful company and one that had really
charted a new path for American steel, I would presume that your
blessing would've been a very important political asset for persons
either in the political arena or hoping to get in the political arena.
This is a question that I put to a lot of business leaders — the extent
to which their endorsement is sought out by political figures. The
question [is about] the way politicians have come to you over the years.
I'd be interested in having you reflect on that.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We had a very firm policy in the company. The corporate company did not
contribute to any politician. It was just not a part of the company. If
individuals wanted to, that was fine, but there was no corporate
approval or donation to anybody. That was because we were widespread and
there were politicians in different parts of the country that were
interested in our supporting them. We felt it was
not fair because we had so many people in different parts of the country
that the company should just stay out of that arena.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

So effectively then — because you could never fully never remove the
corporate hat, the Nucor hat — you yourself personally kept a low
profile on those issues as well?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yes I did.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

How about your reflection generally? You're setting up and really
building a business from the mid-sixties forward. What was your
perspective on the typical southern state house and legislature in those
years and the nature of the politics that unfolded in those places,
insofar as it had implications for you and the business? I ask in part
because your early experiences were in a different part of the country.
Coming in and observing how southern politics is operating, what kind of
impressions did it make on you?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I don't know. Southern politics — when I first came here in 1962 — was
unusual for me. I was not used to politics being run that way. But I
felt comfortable with it. I found it very interesting really. I remember
meeting Fritz Hollins when he was leaving as Governor. I always enjoyed
it although I was never a strong participant because our business was
not focussed on something that was political. We only got involved in it
when we began to build plants all over the United States, and we wanted
to get tax concessions in order to make it more reasonable for doing
that. Then we got more involved in that area of government.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I wanted to draw you out on that point. Was there any contradiction
between your professed corporate value on the one hand — that you
disfavored corporate subsidies in any form — and then the whole tax
concession issue? It has become such an important one for plant sitings,
obviously, so your reflections would be—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

That was interesting, and probably there is a little bit of conflict
between our principles and what it was necessary to do at that time. As
companies more and more required that they [received] tax concessions,
our own people got involved in that. The cost of an infrastructure and
roads and things of that nature for a new facility became important to
the company. That's very true.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Within the industry, it became a competitive necessity in your view?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. It became necessary. If you were going to go into an area, you
needed to have some concession on taxes for the first few years. It's
kind of interesting. One of those principles—. When we were proposing
[to build] a mill in Blytheville, Arkansas, Bill Clinton flew over to
Charlotte and sat down. We said we needed—. There were five items. I
went through them one, two, three, four, five. It included a tax
concession, and it included some infrastructure. It included some other
things. He agreed to all of them except one, which was a tax relief for
companies that were in Arkansas.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I have to ask. It's a bit of an aside, but I'm curious. What was your
measure of the young Bill Clinton — young Governor Clinton — in those
years?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I was very impressed with him when he came over with one security guy
and a private plane and came to our offices, which were over on Randolph
Road here. We sat down, and in about an hour it was pretty well
resolved. He had to get certain legislators, legislative things through.
He said, "I can do that." And that was it. It took a little longer, the
second plant we built there. It took a little bit longer. I went over
there and said, "We're coming here." I remember one story about him. He
said that — when I was there — he said, "You know you're lucky. As the
Chairman of a corporation, you can get things done rapidly. You don't
get anything done rapidly in government."

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me take you back for a moment to the issue of plant sitings and the
negotiating for certain tax concessions. How big a factor were the tax
concessions in your decision to locate in Trinidad?

KENNETH IVERSON:

The tax concessions were not a reason to locate in Trinidad.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Not at all? It was the ore supply?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was the fact that that was a good location for bringing in ore from
Brazil to Trinidad and then using that ore for the iron carbide and
moving it there. You eliminated moving lots of ore. The tax concessions
really didn't have anything to do with that.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Another issue [is about] — stepping back to again a broad philosophical
question — the role of unionization in American labor and capitalist
enterprise. You obviously had a certain model of operating the business
that made it not so difficult for you to encourage workers to the view
that unions weren't necessarily something that they needed to see their
interests well represented.

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's right.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Maybe if you would, reflect broadly on that question of unionization. Do
you see it as useful in some places?

KENNETH IVERSON:

There are companies that need unions where management is really not very
good and where there ends up policies that are unfair to the workers and
so on. I think sometimes they need a union. But I don't think we have—.
We treat our people fairly. We've always had a profit sharing program
for them. We're very loyal to our people. We don't lay off anybody. We
haven't laid off anybody. We haven't had a layoff, across the board,
ever in the company. So we don't lay people off. We reward them for—.
The whole idea is you get rewarded for what progress the company makes
and what your proportion is of that progress.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

We had talked earlier about how you grabbed hold very quickly of the
whole issue of Jim Crow style racial division within a plant and took
care of that and it didn't prove to be much of a problem. Was the
integration of women into Nucor Mills over the years—. It must be an
interesting story.

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's a good question. We have hired lots of women over the years, but
remember steel is not a climate that is necessarily conducive to the
female. We ran an ad one time for women in the steel mill.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I've seen that.

KENNETH IVERSON:

They're wonderful workers. I'll tell you were they were the very best in
maintenance or in crane operations. They had a dexterity, of course,
that is probably a little bit better than men. We have lots of women who
operate cranes in the company. They've done very well. We've had a
number of women in the financial area, of course, too. We even had some
that have operated furnaces, although that's rare. We were always
interested in hiring regardless of the sex [of the applicant]. That
didn't make any difference. It was just difficult. We had two women that
I remember had applied as truck drivers one time. They took them out and
got in a truck and said, "Drive it around." They couldn't do it. We had
a women who we hired one time and we said, "Now, when you got out as an
inventory control [worker], you've got to wear slacks. You can't go out
and climb over all that in a dress." She said, "Well my religion won't
let me wear pants." She had to quit right a way. Instances like that
kind of made it less easy to employ a lot of women.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

How about in terms of the shop floor culture? Was the arrival of women
onto the shop floor in the mills a substantial management problem for
your plant managers [and] general managers?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. I don't ever remember that. We've had women who are in maintenance,
and we've had women who worked out in the shop. It's never been a
problem. I imagine there are instances where there have been some
disappointed women or disappointed men, but we've never had that as a
problem.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

In your book you talk about your willingness to take risks. You use the
phrase "prudent risk." [You say] that — as a natural and normal part of
your operating philosophy as a businessperson — every once in a while
something will go wrong. That's just part of the range of—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

I have a saying that about fifty percent of the things we try really
don't work out, but you can't move ahead and develop new technology and
develop a business unless you're willing to take risks and adopt new
technologies as they occur.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

In coming to a judgment that a given gamble is a prudent one, how much
of your calculation was expressly experientially derived?

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's one of the things that I really provided to the company. I had
experience in metals and metal processing. Fortunately we got the
reputation of accepting new ideas in an industry that was rather
tradition bound. That gave us a distinct advantage in developing the
culture and developing new processes and new technologies that made
Nucor successful.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

When did the day arrive — and maybe it was because journalists just kept
showing up at your door to ask you to explain why things were going so
well — when you had to put a name on the management philosophy?

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

This is side B of the first cassette of [an interview with] Mr. Iverson
on the 11th of June, 1999. Let me just pose that last question again. I
was asking if the day arrived when you had to stop and say, "Oh my
goodness, I do have a coherent management philosophy, and I'll put a
name or a label on it."

KENNETH IVERSON:

I don't know if I ever put a name or a label on it, particularly. We
became more recognized as the company became successful — as it was
recognized as an innovator in the steel industry.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Over time, how did you manage Nucor's reputation [and] image as against,
say, big steel?

KENNETH IVERSON:

[Laughter]

I don't know exactly. I never had a lot of respect for the big
integrated steel industries. They were inflexible. They were
bureaucratic. They all had unions. They certainly weren't a cultural
pack that I wanted Nucor to follow. Our philosophy really developed from
the general managers. Each steel mill has a general manager. He reports
directly to the corporate headquarters. He basically has a
responsibility of running the business. Now of course there are some
caveats with regard to treatment of people and with regard to
participation in the insurance and the profit sharing, which are
corporate wide. But basically he runs it, and he is the number one human
relations person in that plant.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me draw out a little bit more about big steel. It's hard to point to
any one part of the puzzle that fits together as big steel. You've
mentioned the nature of the plant, the nature of the management, the
bureaucracy that prevails, the unionized labor force, the particular
history and product stream, and so forth. Could US big steel's history
have turned out substantially different than it has
if they had taken one particular step at one particular point along the
way or were there any key turning points that things might have gone
differently in your judgment?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Remember after World War Two we were the largest steel industry in the
world. We were not just larger than one or two or three. We were the
largest of all of them put together. Our steel industry became very
complacent. They had had great success during World War Two. They were
not acceptable to new ideas. They really were used to having unions and
the unions were a very powerful force in the steel industry. They were
reluctant to adopt any new ideas. Eventually the steel companies and the
mini-mills were growing up in Italy and mini-mills in Europe and new
technologies were rolling and casting. Those things were occurring.
There were sixteen continuous casters outside the United States before
there was one in the United States. That one was put in by a small mill
in Roanoke, Virginia. We were just behind the rest of the world. It
began to show up, particularly in the fifties, initially when there was
a big strike and we began importing a lot of steel from outside the
United States. We did a lot of importing of steel at that time. We
didn't have steel mills. We did a lot of importing of steel, even I
remember from Russia at that time. There were just all sorts of
opportunities for new companies to develop to accept new ideas in the
steel industries. We were just fortunate enough that we were able to
take advantage of that. We built the first mini-mill in 1966. Seems to
me it was 1966, 1967. In 1970 it really got going. We felt we could
compete with steel companies inside the United States by using these new
technologies. Then we kept on building steel mills and joist plants.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Over the years you were careful to attend to relationships with certain
European equipment manufacturers whose technologies would become very,
very critical in your operations. How—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

We originally had US equipment, but we also found that we could get more
technically advanced equipment by going outside of the United States. We
developed the first mill. We developed a relation with Morgenschamar in
Sweden and with, at that time, it was ASEA Electric—A-S-E-A, which later
became part of Brown Boveri. I remember one time myself, the
construction manager, and potential manager spent about two weeks in
Europe doing nothing but touring these small steel mills that were
starting up over there. That really was a great trip. It gave us a good
idea of how outdated the technology was in the United States.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

When abouts was this trip? Do you remember?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Let me think. 1967 I think.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Okay. Let me ask a very mundane question. How does the executive
management of a small [and] then relatively small American steel
producer put an itinerary of these visits together with people in
Europe?

KENNETH IVERSON:

We just looked up the names of the people we knew who were strong in the
steel industry and had mills that we wanted to visit. We went to
Danielli in Italy and Morgenschamar and a number of German companies, a
mill in Denmark. It wasn't too hard to find the names of them. You just
asked if you could come and visit them, and most of them were very
receptive.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Why were they receptive, I wonder? Why did they want to help you out in
your thinking and your deliberating and your exploration?

KENNETH IVERSON:

A number of them were equipment suppliers.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Oh well that sure.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Like Danielli and Morgenschamar. Normally it was the suppliers who
helped us to get into them.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Here is our equipment installed.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. See our equipment installed. That was certainly true of—. We
visited four or five small mills in what was called the Breschiani part
of Italy, northern Italy where most of those and Danielli equipment
[were]. And of course Concast was interested in selling continuous
castors, and the United States was not very interested. That gave us a
lot of entrees, too.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Did the joint venture with the Japanese—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yes.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Tell me about the origins of that.

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's interesting. We were approached by Wachovia Bank, which was our
principal bank. They said there is a a Japanese bank which would like to
talk to you about a Japanese company who is interested in doing wide
flanged beams. At that time there was a lot of political conflict about
Japanese shipping steel into the United States. They introduced us to
the Industrial Bank of Japan, IBJ. They said, "We have someone who would
like to talk to you about a joint venture, too." It was not proprietary,
but they had for four or five years worked on continuous casting
I-beams, close to the shape of the I-beam, which eliminated a lot of
rolling. Instead of taking a square, you cast what was roughly an I-beam
shape, and then you rolled it down in fewer and fewer passes. It
originated, I think, in Algoma in the United States, but nobody in the
United States had taken advantage of it. The Japanese had. They came
over and we sat down and discussed it. It took us a year. You don't make
fast contracts with the Japanese. It took us a year to do it. I was in
Japan two or three times and they came here and met here two or three
times. It finally was decided we would have fifty-one percent. They
would have forty-nine percent. We would build it as a joint venture. We
picked the location in Arkansas. When they saw it, and they found out we
were going to pay $2000 for the land — per acre — they nearly fell flat on their face. They couldn't believe.
They kept saying over and over, "Are you sure this is only $2400 an
acre?" I said, "Yeah." So that's the way we started out. Now, they were
wonderful assistance to us. They knew the technology very well. We took
these big Arkansas farm boys and sent them over to Japan to train on
running this castor for about five weeks or something like that. They
did a marvelous job. After three weeks, they were running the castor
themselves. We had a bunch of Japanese here when we were building the
plant. I remember that they used to get very upset — the Japanese being
very meticulous — that we'd hammer out a foundation or something. They'd
say, "Ah, we hammered out foundation." And John would say, "That's just
the foundation for today. We'll probably hammer out another one
tomorrow." Our method was to build it as fast as possible because once
your money is tied up in capital construction, you want nothing better
than to do it and don't spend a lot of time bureaucracy or planning. Go
ahead and build the damned thing. So we did. They wanted to make whole
runs with just bars. We said, "No. We're going to start it up and melt
and make the cast and run it right through." That's what we did. That
was a wonderful experience. They were really great to work with. We
still have a wonderful relationship with them.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Any aspect of this joint venture that could be construed as part of a
wider Japanese government sponsored initiative to move certain parts of
Japanese manufacturing onto the mainland US, as they've done with auto
joint ventures and so forth?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I think there probably was some interest in the Japanese government
because there were a lot of joint ventures with steel companies during
that time. This was a small Japanese company. They were really much
smaller than we were in some respects. But they were interested in doing
it so that they would have a US source. They were being pushed out of
the West Coast where they had been shipping imports
in for a long time. They wanted to protect themselves in that regard.
That's the way it developed with us.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

You didn't have a sense along the way that there was an expressed
measure of pressure — not pressure, but encouragement — from the
Japanese government to get a deal like this done and to help manage the
politics of the balance of trade and so forth?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. No. We, like most Japanese, made a contract. We sat down and one of
the things we wanted was fifty-one percent. We wanted an understanding
that the managers would report to Americans as the managers, although
you would have department heads who were Japanese. We also wanted to
reduce the total leverage in the operations. We made the contracts and
we said that it was unsatisfactory to us. We went over to Japan after
they admitted we'd make a lot of changes and here they had the exact
same contract all over again. That's typical of the Japanese. However,
they were right, and we were interested in even going further and doing
some multiple rolling, have to go through two stands and then back.
There was a mill that was built in Russia, it seems to me, that had used
that technology and our people thought it was interesting. They said,
"No. That is not a good technology." We finally — after really studying
it and almost coming apart because of that — agreed they were right. We
did not adopt that technology, which was way out and eventually was not
very successful. We learned a lot from them.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Have you considered other joint venture initiatives along the way that
you had found cause to reject or decline? Any substantial ones?

KENNETH IVERSON:

We were involved in a possible joint venture in Thailand that — just
because of the people involved in it — we eventually backed out of. We
were interested in building a joint venture with a Brazilian company in
northern Brazil, where there is no steel mill. We finally got so that that didn't appear like a good deal, and we
backed out of that. We've been involved in lots of opportunities or
Nucor has to build steel mills in Iran or Egypt or wherever, but most of
those people want to build a steel mill that is everything to everybody.
They want to make rebars and angles and channels and flat rolled
products and the whole thing at a mill. That's just not the way that
Nucor has operated. Eventually those broke down.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

The northern Brazil one, you didn't pursue it because your sense of the
market there shifted or because the financial particulars were not
advantageous?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Why did they break down?

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

No, the northern Brazil case in particular, you lost your confidence
that moving into that part of the Brazilian market would've been—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

We didn't. They suddenly decided that they wanted to do it all — build a
big complex — and we weren't ready for that. We wanted to build a
rolling operation and take slabs from Brazil or from the United States
and roll the slabs and cold finish them. They wanted to build the hot
mill and everything at once. We felt that that was just not a good idea.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

The principal task that you've set your managers is to — as you've
observed in various places and in your book — shape an environment that
encourages a certain kind of opportunity for employees to realize their
potential and contribute in an unencumbered way to the company's success
by aligning their interests with management's and the company's
generally. I want to ask a few questions about picking people along the
way.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Oh, that's critical.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Do you have a theory? Do you have a rule of thumb? You fly by the seat
of your pants? I know you have employed a professional to help you with
the design of certain psychological tests that you
give to managers. I wonder what sorts of things you think are
interesting to find out.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We have used a psychological test for managers not particularly to find
out how good the manager is. We know before that he is technically
proficient, knowledgeable and so on. What we're trying to find out is
what are the weaknesses where we need to shore him up as a general
manager, if he's the one that's selected. We had a basic process that we
went through. Normally most of the managers came from inside the
corporation. They had come up and been recognized and were foreman and
even department heads at one point. When we came to select a general
manager for a new plant, he first of all had to be recommended by the
manager of that plant, which he was in now. Secondly, he had to go and
be tested psychologically in Chicago. He had to be interviewed by
myself, by John Correnti, and by our manager of personnel sevices. If
any five said, "No. I don't think he's the person," we didn't pick him.
Now I've had good and bad. I've had, the four people and I've picked for
manager and the one I picked for manager or Sadler and Associates, which
was in Chicago and did the psychological testing said, "Don't take him.
He won't be a good manager." We did not. Subsequently that turned out to
be the right opinion from what history showed. But he's also been
wishy-washy on what we could or could not do it. Sometimes we picked
them and were disappointed.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

What impressed you the most and at the same time, what caused you most
concern in evaluating a perspective manager?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I guess I was looking for someone who was really interested in people
and in managing people and who could get along with people. That's the
criterion that is the most important. You can always find someone who
has the technical abilities or appears to — we made
mistakes in that area — but to find somebody who can really get along
and be a leader of people is a difficult. It is not an easy job.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Just to pursue the point of these psychological tests, profiling tests
that you did and so forth, what were you most interested to find out?
Did you get involved in the evaluation of these tests and the design of
these tests?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. That we left to Sadler and Associates. He designed a test for us to
select foremen, and it was a simple test. What he did was take a bunch
of good foremen and a bunch of not very good foremen and found out
differences to various questions and he used that as a guide to
selecting foremen, which worked out pretty well surprising. Strange
questions [such as,] "Do you like to watch baseball games?" "How much
sleep do you get at night?" Psychological questions that look peculiar
to you and I, but actually from which he could get really good insight.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Your efforts to make sure you had just the sort of managers you wanted,
obviously that effort has paid great dividends. You rightly gave a lot
of attention to it. Just one last question on this front. How much time
and money did you spend on the Sadler people as a measure of your
necessity of committing in a certain way to this evaluative process?

KENNETH IVERSON:

They were one of the basic components of our selecting a general
manager.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

So you routinized it and made it a part of the—?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was a course that we followed and a pattern that we followed in
selecting.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

No undue expense or attention that you had to pay to Sadler and
Associates over the years?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. No. The general managers met three times a year. They outlined a
budget and made proposals for the next year as far as capital
expenditures in a meeting in November. In a meeting
in February, we finalized that. Then we had a meeting in May that was
mostly devoted just to employee practices and policies. This was very
much a participative meeting. There was a lot of argument, a lot of
discussion about it. They were very much all involved in that selection.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me ask about your effort, as you put in your book, "to escape the
box," the one-third of the steel market that you could participate in
before you went into the flat roll business. This might sound an odd
angle of approach, but much of this has been covered in the book and in
the business press. I hope this sounds like a serious question. I intend
it is one. What sort of emotional experience was to take that gamble
across those couple of years? What sort of levels of anxiety? How much
concern?

KENNETH IVERSON:

You mean going into the flat roll business?

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

And investing. Plunking the money down to take that gamble.

KENNETH IVERSON:

For me it wasn't any risk. I've often joked that I slept like a baby.
I'd wake up every hour and cry. Basically it was a just a thrilling
experience. Every company at some point plays "bet the company." They
take a risk when they don't have the financial strength to really take
that risk. This was not the case. This was something that we knew we had
to do eventually. If we were going to be a steel company, we had to get
into the flat roll products, and we encouraged SMS and supported their
developments from 1984 until they thought it was ready to be
commercialized in 1989. For me, it was a wonderful experience and just
what we were looking for. I had no really big trepidations although the
other steel companies did, and certainly Bethlehem had a two paged book,
which they showed wouldn't work. But it was—. It did work, and I always
had confidence it would. That's not true of lots of things that we've
done where I didn't have that kind of confidence.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

But your general level of comfort there was pretty high, that this would
work, pan out.

KENNETH IVERSON:

My comfort level was what we needed to do it. It was a huge opportunity
and the risk was well worth the rewards.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I'm going to reach back to a question I asked some time ago. You just
mentioned SMS and watching and maintaining a relationship with them over
many years before they told you the technology was really ready to go.
How did you maintain that relationship? What was the nature of those
contacts over the years?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I went over there. Our engineers went over there. We had people visiting
them two or three times a year.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

So it's just something you wanted to keep a close eye on?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. It was something we were very interested in.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

The decision to open the Trinidad plant to—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Iron carbide.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Produce iron carbide, exactly, from the Brazilian ore. I think you write
in your book or were quoted somewhere as calling that—. I think a
journalist called you up and asked you about that. You were quoted as
calling it "a giant lab experiment."

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Did that plant have a fallback use or was that a pure eighty
million-dollar gamble?

KENNETH IVERSON:

It was a gamble. It didn't turn out the way that exactly we thought it
would. There were more technical problems associated with it than we
suspected or had been led to believe were solved, and the problems were
not solved. Finally the company decided to abandon it not because we
weren't—. We were at the point where I think we could have made it work.
We had worked with Lurgie and other people and were
sure that the original process had to be substantially revised in order
to make it work. But at that time the price of scrap went so low that it
just was no longer economically feasible. The company decided not to
pursue it.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

How about that underlying dream there that you talked about at one point
— the one-step iron carbide, no tube steel production?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I'm not sure I understand that.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I think in your book you talk about—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

I know what you're talking about. The once using iron carbide as the
whole process and just using iron carbide. That certainly will come
about some day. It's still technically feasible, but we'd never
developed iron carbide to the point that we could provide the quantity
and quality of iron carbide to make that a possibility.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me shift to another issue. The general matter of scrap supply and
market. Can you sketch the rough trajectory of that market and the ebbs
and flow and the reasons therefore?

KENNETH IVERSON:

What market is this?

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

The scrap metal market and your supply stream, in other words, on that
front. What issues have been most difficult to manage in that regime?

KENNETH IVERSON:

We work with the David Joseph Company. They are the primary scrap
supplier to all of our mills. We buy all of the grades of scrap that are
available in smaller or larger quantities. Our philosophy is not to
build up a big inventory of scrap and risk what will happen in the
market, but when scrap prices are down to buy about twenty percent more
than you use every month. When scrap prices are very high, you reduce
that and just buy what you need basically to maintain an inventory. We
have a policy that we should maintain an inventory of at least eight
weeks scrap on the ground. That's very simple. The scrap deal is going
to fly over and take a photograph of your
inventory, so you'd sure better have enough so he's not suddenly going
to raise his prices. That's the basic business.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Does the scrap supply stream at all involve issues related to
environmental policy, government regulation? I don't know that matter at
all in any detail.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. Environmentalists become a more and more important part of a scrap
business. One of the really, really serious problems of buying scrap has
been radiation detectors because you take somebody who has a dental
x-ray, and it's got some cesium in it. He just throws it into a scrap
pile, and eventually you melt it, and you've contaminated everything
with it. We've had that happen a number of times. Now we use the best
and the highest priced scrap radiation detectors that we can in all of
our operations.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Any other issues about plant operation where environmental concerns have
been a central challenge?

KENNETH IVERSON:

Environmental has become a major issue. You're always going to have
people who are protesting that you are going to influence the path of
the birds flying over the plant or something of that nature. Of course,
particles that come out of the smoke control, bag houses is now a very
important and expensive part of building a plant. It used to be that
maybe in a plant you'd spend five percent of your cost in environmental
controls. Today it's probably closer to fifteen or twenty percent.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

We talked a little bit about the SMS relationship over time, but how
have you managed, within the company, to keep apace of other aspects of
technology that have been relevant to the business? Has that been a big
problem or concern?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No, it hasn't. We have a reputation in the steel industry — Nucor does —
of accepting new technology. When people developed new technology they
would come to us with these ideas, and then we
could decide if they were good or bad or show them out and make them our
mistake as well as their's.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

But generally people are knocking on your door to say, "Hey look at
this?"

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. "Look at this."

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Let me turn for final few minutes towards the question of broader
economic context in the last thirty or forty years. I don't imagine that
given the nature of your business and where you're plants have been
located and so forth that the particular unfolding economic history of
North Carolina ever had to be a close professional concern.

KENNETH IVERSON:

No.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Was it at all something that mattered in your calculations? Maybe not.
You have no plants in North Carolina.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We do.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Oh, excuse me.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We have a plant that produces bearings in Wilson, North Carolina.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Oh, the bearings plant.

KENNETH IVERSON:

We're now building a mill in Hertford County, which will be a big mill
to produce plate.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Okay.

KENNETH IVERSON:

I guess the answer to that is yes. We were never really principally
involved as a North Carolina corporation.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

It's a regional issue, anyway. Let me take up the matter of the broad
economic transformation of the South across the last forty or fifty
years — the post-War South. What factors do you think have been most—.
This is an open-ended question with no firm answer, I suppose. What
factors are most responsible for the success of a company like Nucor — a
new style of industrial success in the South in the Post-War.

KENNETH IVERSON:

The South has really completely changed since I first came here in 1962.
A lot of it is due technologies moving into the area and to educational
policies that allowed for a more educated workforce and by the companies
themselves producing a more educated workforce. That's made tremendous
changes in the South. When I came in 1962, there were almost no metal
companies here or metal fabrication companies. That has been one of the
major areas [of southern development]. I think it's been helped by the
fact that it also has a more non-union climate, than a particularly
militant union climate. The financial resources here have greatly
changed too over that period of time.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Did you ever consider Nucor a southern corporation? In other words, [did
you consider] the issue of persistent regional distinctiveness or no?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No. I don't think we ever thought of Nucor as really [having] a southern
heritage or [as a] southern corporation. We have plants all over and
there's some interesting stories in that regard. When we built our first
plant outside of South Carolina in Nebraska, we took a number of
employees from the plant in Florence and moved them to start this new
joist plant in Norfolk, Nebraska. They spent one winter in Nebraska, and
we probably had twenty percent of them that loaded up in their cars and
came back and said, "Can I have my job back?" The regional differences
were much greater in 1962 than they are today. Employees today are more
ready to move for an opportunity to almost any climate. I've often said
that the South—. You have other-directed, inner-directed and
traditional-directed people. When I came here in 1962, certainly it was
more the traditional-directed individuals. That's gradually disappearing
from the area. A good example of that is turning on your parking lights
when you drive at night. That was still very prevalent here when I moved
down in '62, and it's all gone now. I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona.
There was a store —Nordstrom or one of the great department stores —I
went one time, and they had at that time a telephone dialing service
where you put in cards and then you pushed the button and it dialed it.
I was talking to him and he said, "This is really simple to operate. All
you do is put the card in and you mash the button." I said, "Where are
you from in South Carolina?" I did it instinctively and he said, "My
daddy and I had a lumber store In—." I've forgotten where it was, but—.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

"Mash." Yeah.

KENNETH IVERSON:

That's really traditional-directed, and that's been a characteristic of
the South, which is both good and bad. I mean, it's good. I'm sorry to
see some of it disappear.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

So less and less generally — both in the business world and just in the
cultural climate of the south — you see that regional distinctiveness
slipping away across these thirty plus years.

KENNETH IVERSON:

Yeah. When I came here, you didn't need big contracts. A handshake and
an understanding was really—. A man was as good as his word. That I
think is disappearing a lot from the South and is becoming,
unfortunately, like the rest of the country.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

You've mentioned in the course of our conversation that being actively
involved in influencing the political regime and the environment was not
something that Nucor spent its time doing, but as a citizen and as a
business leader, how happy or not have you been with the state's fiscal
priorities and the region's fiscal priorities? I'm thinking of
infrastructure, education,—.

KENNETH IVERSON:

I think there's still a lot that needs to be done in the educational
area in the South. I'm not just talking about North Carolina but in the
South as a region. As far as fiscal responsibility, I think they have
really done a pretty good job in not overspending and really keeping
taxes in a reasonable area.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

One last question. How about the issue of what you could call "corporate
civic responsibility?" What's the proper role of a profit-making
enterprise in a system like ours? How wide are your obligations?

KENNETH IVERSON:

I guess I may be a little bit old fashioned. I'm a great believer in
charity begins at home. The most important thing is to take care of your
employees and make sure they have a good place to work and a fair place
to work and opportunities to advance. We were, I think, the first in the
United States that we provide a scholarship. I guess it's up to $2,200 a
year for four years of college for every child of every employee without
restriction. That's been a hallmark of the company.
We have lots of employees who have taken advantage of that and then come
back and worked for the company.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

Any other thoughts? Are there other issues you think are really
important to add at this juncture?

KENNETH IVERSON:

No, I can't think of anything, really. We've covered it all pretty well.

JOSEPH MOSNIER:

I really want to thank you for sharing your thoughts with our series.
Thank you.